I probably don’t say this enough, but all of my comrades at Green Ronin kick ass. They work hard day after day for very little reward while dealing with a whole lot of bullshit. It makes me happy to see them get some recognition, as happened today with the announcement of ENnie Award nominees. Between Green Ronin’s own products and those we designed and developed for Black Industries, we have received 14 nominations and 3 honorable mentions. Faery’s Tale also received three nominations, which is cool because GR is publishing Faery’s Tale Deluxe this summer. Here’s our list of nominations:

Best Cover Art: Ultimate Power (HM)
Best Interior Art: Ultimate Power, Children of the Horned Rat
Best Production Values: Ultimate Power
Best Writing: Children of the Horned Rat
Best Rules: Ultimate Power, WFRP Companion (HM)
Best Supplement: Ultimate Power, WFRP Companion, Tome of Corruption (HM)
Best Adventure: Time of Vengeance, Lure of the Liche Lord
Best Aid/Accessory: Deck of Many Things
Best d20/OGL Product: Ultimate Power
Product of the Year: Ultimate Power, Children of the Horned Rat
Fans’ Choice for Best Publisher

Big thanks also to the talented freelancers who worked on our products. We couldn’t do what we do without them.

Now on to GenCon Indy!

I did not go to Origins this year, as it was cheaper and more convenient to let the GR East coast staff handle it. Will I be at other upcoming conventions? Find out!

San Diego ComicCon: Looks like a no go this year, unless FLS decides they need a last minute replacement.

Recombination: This is a scifi, fantasy, and gaming con in Cambridge, England and I’ll be one of the guests of honor. I’ve been to England many times but I’ve never been to Cambridge. I wish I could spend more time on this trip but with FLS in overdrive and GenCon the following week I cannot dally sad to say.

GenCon: I’ve been to every one since 1989 so I’m not going to start missing them now. Green Ronin will have a lot of new stuff at the show too.

Penny Arcade Expo: I won’t be in a booth but I’ll be there doing some seminars.

Austin Game Developers Conference: I hope to make it to this, but I’m waiting to get confirmation from the higher ups at Flying Lab. Trips at FLS are often last minute affairs. Jess once had to get on a plane with two hours notice. Hopefully, I will know sooner rather than later.

Yesterday afternoon I was watching this documentary series on the History Channel about the American Revolution (if you missed it, I’m sure they’ll show it again next July 4th). One episode was about Britain’s southern strategy and how it all went wrong. The British, you see, had stepped into a hornet’s nest in the Carolinas. Loyalist and Patriot militias were terrorizing the countryside. The British made matters worse by issuing an “if you aren’t with us, you’re against us” decree. They looked at the situation as putting down a revolt. What was really going on, however, was what could be considered the first American civil war.

On paper it seemed simple enough. The British had the support of the Loyalist militias, while the small Continental army had the support of the Patriot militias. The war, however, was much more complicated on the ground. The various militias used the war as an excuse to settle old scores, seize disputed land, and persecute vendettas. Attacks led to retribution, which led to counter-attacks and so on. In hundreds of small battles American fought American with nary a redcoat a sight. It was a vicious circle of sectarian violence and the British army walked into the middle of it. They didn’t know the lay of the land or the local politics. Their only real chance was to corner and destroy the Continental army and hope the countryside would fall in line. When this failed, their southern strategy was in shambles.

I’m sure the astute among you can see the parallels with the quagmire in Iraq. The biggest difference is that the British at least had a rebel army it could attack in open battle. The American army in Iraq doesn’t even have that as a target. Nor does it really have the support of a group like the Loyalists. The army is simply stuck in the midst of a civil war, with no clear goals and no realistic strategy. Such are the perils of imperialist ambitions.

I had a busy weekend so I’m looking forward to having tomorrow off. I had a bunch of GR stuff to do on Saturday and then on Sunday I spoke at A Writer’s Weekend, a yearly event in which aspiring writers get a chance to talk to other writers, literary agents, and so on. This was my first time there. I joined ex-WotC-ites Wolf Baur and Scott Hungerford on both the World Building and Writing for Shared Wolds panels. They both went well, but the first was much better attended than the second because the latter was up against a seminar by a bounty hunter giving tips on writing violence. I hear he had great stories to tell.

Today was a double dose of temptation. First, the market across the street from Flying Lab announced that they have brought in Junior’s cheesecake from Brooklyn. This is the cheesecake by which I judge all others and now I can get it anytime I want. That is very dangerous. We also discovered that a new game store opened not two blocks away. Blue Highway Games has board games, cards games, and some collectible minis games. About half the store is family and educational games, as befits Queen Anne, but they also have a lovely selection of Euro games. The place is clean and well put together, and includes gaming tables so people can play right there. It’d be great if this store could thrive, so I made sure to buy something. I chose Paths of Glory by GMT, which I’ve been meaning to pick up for years. Now to find an opponent. Curse you, temptation!

As you’ve probably noticed my blog has a new look. I’ve been tired of the old one for awhile and finally did something about it. One bonus of the facelift is that the process fixed my long broken archives. For the first time in years the links to my old posts actually work. Hooray. To celebrate I’m reposting something from the earliest days of my blog (November 7, 2003 to be precise). I love this story and amusingly enough Jess and I are working together again at Flying Lab.

100 Bullets, No Waiting

I grew up in a suburb of Boston, Peabody to be precise. While guns were something I saw on TV and in movies, they were never part of my real life. The closest I got to an actual gun growing up was an old BB pistol my dad had in his desk drawer and it didn’t work anyway. Nonetheless, I’ve had an abiding interest in military history, and WW2 history in particular, since I was a lad. This is a bit unusual for someone as lefty as I am, which has led to some fairly amusing situations. For example, I’ve been a member of the Military Book Club for years and the MBC has obviously sold my mailing address to a variety of right wing organizations. I get mailings all the time from the likes of the NRA, and occasionally real wacko newsletters from groups that are one step away from blaming ZOG for all America’s troubles. I look at them, chuckle, and dump them in the recycling bin.

Last year I was designing a World War 2 roleplaying game for Polyhedron Magazine, originally titled Dogface but eventually named V For Victory. I was, as is my habit, doing lots of research. I think I easily spent $300 buying books during that period. One of the chapters was all about guns, so I got pretty familiar with the ins and outs of period weapons. When I was in Las Vegas in March, 2002, I heard about a place that had WW2 guns you could rent out and fire on their shooting range. I didn’t have much interest in shooting modern weapons, but this was intriguing. That September I was back in Vegas, with Nicole and our friends Jess and Kathryn. I had told Jess about the gun place and he was curious as well. The two of us decided to head out there one afternoon and check it out. And hey, I could write it off as research.

I had met Jess when I was working at Wizards of the Coast. He worked in the book publishing department, where he was in charge of the Magic: the Gathering novel line. Like me, Jess was (and is) of a lefty bent and we got on famously. As fate would have it, we both got laid off on the same day (along with scores of other folks). We began to joke that we were “layoff brothers.” Could “machinegun brothers” be far behind?

On a hot, bright Vegas day, we took a cab out to the gun shop. It was some way off the Strip, which was no surprise. It was pretty small inside, but nonetheless there were a good six staff members behind the counters. All of them were wearing bulletproof vests and carrying sidearms. One guy had on cowboy boots, an Old West style holster, and was packing a revolver. Interesting.

The deal was pretty simple. After signing a waiver asserting that you aren’t insane (yes, really), you pick a weapon and choose either 50 or 100 shots. They had a nice variety of WW2 era guns, like the British Sten, the American Thompson, the German MP40, and the American M3 Grease Gun. If you’ve ever seen a WW2 movie, you’ve seen an MP40. They are the German submachineguns that are usually (erroneously) called Schmeissers. Any Nazi villain worth his jackboots carries one in war movies. I decided it was so iconic I had to try it.

Jess hemmed and hawed a bit. He was drawn to the M16, which was big and black. I tried to convince him to try the Thompson (we were already planning on swapping weapons, so we could try two each). “Come on,” I said, “This is a classic. Designed as a trench sweeper for WWI, it arrived too late to see combat. Gangsters loved it, and it went on to serve in WW2.” Jess was not convinced. “There’s something about that M16,” he said.

“So you want the big, black cock of death then,” I said.

Jess smiled. “Yes I do.”

Our helper rang us up, and gave us each 4 magazines of ammo for our guns. Then he pointed to some targets and asked us each to pick one. On most days, you could choose from a tombstone, Saddam Hussein, or Osama bin Laden. Seems there had been a run on bin Laden, so they were fresh out. I opted for the more neutral tombstone, and Jess tried to get in the spirit of the place by choosing Saddam Hussein.

Then we got safety goggles and glasses and were led back to the shooting range. It was a spare affair, a small room with three stalls for shooting. When we entered, there were several young Asian guys with pistols finishing up. They were firing them sideways, “gangsta” style. It looked more like Lorezno Lamas on his lame old show Renegade but I kept that observation to myself.

At this point, Jess seemed a bit on edge. He confessed to our drawling assistant that he had never fired a gun before.

“Whut?!” he said, shocked. “Are you from California?”

“Uh, no,” Jess replied. “I’m from Seattle.”

“Oh, well that’s alright.”

The guy turns to me. He had heard me rattling off about the Thompson earlier, so he assumed I was a gun guy. “You’ve fired a gun before, right?” he asked confidently.

“Actually, no,” I said. “This is my first time.”

“Whut?! Are YOU from California?”

“Nope, I’m also from Seattle.”

This seemed to satisfy him, though I’m not sure why. He ran through the basics. Pretty simple really. Then he sent Jess’s target down to the end of the range and handed him the M16.

Jess took it a bit gingerly, put it up to his shoulder, and sighted it down the range. He fired off a tentative first burst.

“You hear that?” our assistant said, pointing down to Saddam, “He’s calling you a sissy boy!”

Jess laid into it and got more comfortable. In no time at all, he had fired off his two magazines and shot up Saddam real good. Our assistant reloaded the M16 and handed it to me. I started with a short burst, to get a feel for it. Had more kick than I expected. Loud too, even with the ear protection. The target was all of 30 feet away, so it was easy even for a rank amateur to hit. I’m sure that was no coincidence.

After I finished with that, it was on the MP40. Compared to the M16, this was like butter. Barely any kick, easy to control for short bursts. I could see why these guns were so handy in street fighting. However, this one was having some trouble with the trigger sticking. While firing my second magazine, the gun just rattled on and on, shooting out sparks near my head. When Jess tried it, he had the same difficulty. Guess that’s what happens to 50 year old guns.

Afterwards, they gave us our targets, and stamped each one with the gun we had fired at it. The shooting hadn’t taken longer than 10 minutes, even with controlled bursts and 200 shots between us. I spent a few minutes looking around the store, checking out their book section in particular. Jess was antsy and clearly wanted to go. Later, over drinks, he told me that he felt like we were imposters in a strange and foreign land. He worried that at any minute, they’d discover that we were pinko, anti-war bastards that had voted against Bush. Maybe he thought they had a special graveyard in the basement for the likes of us!

We got back to the absurdity of the Strip an hour later. The whole thing was a bit surreal, though it made for a good story. So much so that come the next GAMA Trade Show, I ended up back there with Nicole and Hal, who wanted to give it a try. Our version of company bonding, I guess. This time I got to shoot that Thompson and a Sten gun (though they ruined this vintage weapon by sticking a laser scope on it for some strange reason). The Thompson turned out to be the best of the bunch. Sometimes, you’ve got to go with the classics.

Since I came onboard at Flying Lab last year the company has always been agonizingly close to securing a publishing deal for Pirates of the Burning Sea. When I was hired, the release date was June (as in, now). Several times we were on the verge of signing a deal and then there’d be some issue or other. Well, today a press release has finally gone out. Pirates of the Burning Sea will be published by SOE (Sony Online Entertainment). You can read the PR here:

http://www.soepress.com/product.asp?s=48

It’s a good deal for Flying Lab. The company gets to control the game itself, the community, customer support, and the servers, while SOE handles billing, marketing, retail distribution, and localization. Most importantly Flying Lab retains ownership of the game. This is way better than a lot of the deals the company has been offered. Many MMO fans, of course, do not have kindly feelings towards SOE so naturally the internet has been ablaze all day. There are many differences between the tabletop gaming industry and the computer game industry, but in this way they are exactly the same. Gamers will be gamers I guess. I can say that my boss Rusty is completely serious when he asserts the following: “If Pirates isn’t good, if you don’t like how the game is designed, or how the servers are operated, or how we interact with our community, it’ll be our fault, not SOE’s. We own the game and the buck stops here.”

SOE needs a hit MMO and Flying Lab needs to get boxes onto retail shelves. Time to hoist the black flag of commerce.

I had gotten really sick of the stuff on my I-tunes at work, so I’ve gone down the hill to Easy Street Records a couple of times lately to get some new music. Before I rip the CDs I always go in and change the genre entry. Most of the stuff I listen to is tagged “alternative & punk”. The thing is I’ve hated the term “alternative” since it first came into use in the 80s. It was this catch-all term for about anything that wasn’t on the radio and as such it was nearly useless. Saying something is alternative is only slightly more informative than saying it is music. Instead I change the genre entry to something more specific. This is most often punk but I also use psychobilly, postpunk, hardcore, ska, reggae, celtic punk, and a few others. This allows me to sort by genres that actually mean something instead of having one big morass.

It’s for similar reasons I don’t use the term “indie” in relation to roleplaying games. I mean sure, certain pedants have proved that you can define it so narrowly that only their anointed games and special exceptions “count”, but who are they trying to kid? By any reasonable definition 99% of all the RPGs ever published are “independent” and pretending otherwise creates a false dichotomy. If what people really mean is “small press” and/or “creator owned”, or if they want to identify themselves with a particularly community of designers, they should just say that. Right now saying something is indie is only slightly more informative than saying it’s a roleplaying game.

I read a graphic novel called Stagger Lee this week. On one level the book attempts to tell the story of a man who became a reoccurring character in American folklore. What really makes it interesting though is that it also traces the development of the legend through song, showing how the story changed decade after decade as hundreds of different musicians made it their own. The root of the story is a shooting that took place in St. Louis in the 1890s. A man named Lee Shelton shot one Billy Lyons, supposedly over a Stetson hat. Some nameless musician wrote a song about it and it spread from city to city. Songs about Stagger Lee, Stag O Lee, Stackolee, and so one are all about this same guy, and over the years the countless variations of the story have appeared. In most Stag shoots Billy but in some it’s the other way round. Sometimes Stag meets the devil, in others he’s hung. Almost all versions agree that he was a bad, bad man. The first Stagger Lee song I heard was The Clash’s Wrong ‘em Boyo, though my favorite is Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Stagger Lee. The graphic novel, by Derek McCulloch and Shepherd Hendrix, is a clever mix of history, speculation, and fiction. Although focusing on Stag and Billy, it also tells several other murder stories that become folkloric songs. All of them took in St. Louis in the same neighborhood and within five years of each other. If you have any interest in American folklore, music, or history, I recommend checking out Stagger Lee.

I wrote this for the Freeport blog today. Since I’m out of blogging time, I’m reposting it here for those who need further encouragement to check out the Pirate’s Guide to Freeport. Enjoy.

Beyond Freeport

I don’t even think it took a week after the release of Death in Freeport for people to start asking if I was going to blow Freeport out into a full campaign setting. I resisted the urge for many, many years. Part of Freeport’s appeal, after all, was that you could drop it into any campaign setting, and the feedback I got from gamers told me they were doing just that. Nonetheless, I started keeping notes on what I’d do if ever the time came to detail the world beyond Freeport. Whenever I had a random idea, I’d jot it down or write up a little something and save it. One of these days, I told myself, I’ll do something with all these ideas.

That day came last year when work began on the Pirate’s Guide to Freeport. Since one of our stated goals was to make the book as deluxe as possible, I decided to dedicate a chapter to the larger world. Before I go on, let me point out that this entire chapter is optional. If you want to use Freeport with the setting of your choice, that’s just what the Pirate’s Guide is designed for and you need have no worries. References to the Continent and the gods are still generic throughout the book. However, the Beyond Freeport chapter is there for you if you are in the market for a larger campaign setting.

The chapter starts with a bit of cosmic history and then zooms in to focus on the Continent. The basic idea is that Yig created the world in the time before time and the serpent people were his chosen champions. Yig sent his power and his followers out into the cosmic soup, conquered other realities, and made them part of his world. When the Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign summoned the Unspeakable One, however, it was a complete disaster for Yig and his followers. The serpent person empire of Valossa was destroyed and Yig sent into a torpor from which he has not recovered. The spot where Freeport stands is the center of Yig’s former domains. The further one gets from the center, the more difficult it is to navigate the waters. Getting to the Continent is easy but getting to a distant realm like Hamunaptra is hard and requires the skills of a “mystic navigator”.

The remainder of the Beyond Freeport chapter provides full details (and a gorgeous map by Andy Law) of the Continent. The rest of the world is left mysterious. This was done for two reasons. First, it allows GMs to run games that really are voyages of discovery. Who knows what might be beyond the horizon? Second, it allows the easy integration of other setting material. If you want to create another continent of your own, it’s easy to fit into this framework. If you want a region that is largely unknown to the people of Freeport, you can place it on the borders of Yig’s domains. The idea is that the most distant realms where never conquered by the serpent people because of the Valossan apocalypse, so it’s easy to have distant lands that have never even heard of Yig. Settings that already have some ties to Freeport, like Mindshadows and Hamunaptra, can also be used at your option. In a sense this setup is similar to the way we treat Freeport and the Serpent’s Teeth in the rest of the book, but the detailed area is much larger.

The big reveal for longtime Freeport fans is the Continent itself. This is the core of the campaign setting. Putting this together was tricky because I felt like it had to have classic fantasy elements, but I also wanted to play up aspects that made the City of Adventure unique. Freeport, of course, began as a D&D; campaign setting, so the Continent needed to be recognizable as such. However, there are also had to be plenty of room for Lovecraftian elements, piracy, and swashbuckling. As I was putting my notes together, I made a list of features I wanted for the Continent. These included:

1. A history and feel that would integrate well with existing Freeport lore. In Black Sails Over Freeport, for example, barbarians attack Freeport. Well, who are those barbarians and where did they come from?
2. Multiple places for good adventuring. This included border regions, monster-haunted wastelands, and regions unexplored by the civilized races. If this was going to be a fantasy campaign setting, there had to be room for adventures, right?
3. Ancient empires and epochs of history about which little is recorded. Again, this is great adventure fodder. With Freeport it was pretty easy to do because there was such chaos after the fall of Valossa. That’s not the only anarchic period though.
4. A lot of seafaring nations. This was pretty much a must; otherwise Freeport made little sense. In particular, I wanted some outward looking realms that were heavily dependent on the sea. The best example is the Ivory Ports, a collection of city states that not only rely on seaborne trade but also have colonies in other parts of the world.
5. Things Man Was Not Meant to Know.
6. Plenty of conflict amongst the various nations. I also didn’t want too many nations that were clearly “evil”.
7. A strong framework for GMs that would still leave room for their creativity.

This last point in particular was important to me. There are some campaign settings that are overly detailed and I think this actually makes them harder to use. I wanted this chapter to feel more like the original Greyhawk folio (though those looking for the exact amount of heavy cavalry that each nation has will be disappointed). I wanted to give GMs plenty of material to work with and then let them fill in the blanks and really make the setting their own. One feature of the text and the map, for example, is Important Landmarks. They are listed but not detailed, so the GM can use them as seeds for adventures or just as bits of flavor to help evoke the world. This sort of customization is in the best spirit of Freeport and roleplaying in general.

Late in the process I had a final brainstorm. I thought it’d be fun to give Freeport a rival city. I wanted it to be a commercial and military rival, but more than that I wanted it to represent an opposing ethos. And what do Freeporters hate above all else? That’s right, slavery. There’s nothing worse to the free spirited sons and daughters of Freeport than the denial of liberty. Thus I created the city-state of Mazin. I placed it in the distant south and modeled it on the Barbary states of the Mediterranean. Mazin’s galleys prey on the shipping lanes, so the city’s giant slave markets can be fed. In the past Freeport and Mazin went to war and Freeport won the first round. Since it is some distance away, there has not been a second clash . . . yet.

So that’s a little taste of the world beyond Freeport. If you want to read more about what the World of Freeport has to offer, check out the Pirate’s Guide to Freeport, which is coming soon. The book is at print for a July release and we’ll be releasing the PDF next week. Not long now until all is revealed.

I made a real effort to get some work done today and was largely successful. I worked for three hours this morning, and then took a break for a few hours so Nik and I could see our last movie of the Seattle International Film Festival. It was an amusing and dark comedy called Little Book of Revenge. After some of the so-so films we had seen this year, we were relieved that the last one was thoroughly enjoyable. As soon as I saw the title in the preview guide, I knew Nik had to see it. The director was on hand and he introduced the film by saying, “Thank you for choosing to celebrate revenge instead of Father’s Day.” Indeed, sir, indeed.

Once home it was back to work until 11. I was able to cross seven items off my to-do list, including the long-delayed revision of my Hobby Games: the 100 Best essay. I was hoping to get ten items off the list today but seven is not bad. All this did preclude me from writing up the Herbfarm experience, but Nicole has done so on her blog. I will try to follow-up later this week. Hopefully, that won’t fall into the same black hole as the post about ABC No Rio I meant to make after my visit to NYC back in February.

Oh, and my friend Rob is a daddy, so congrats to him and his family. And in continuing the month o’ Green Ronin birthdays, it’s Hal’s on Monday so here’s to him. Now falling unconscious sounds good!